by Graeme Lay
There was a cluster of huts above the shore. As the launches were drawn up on the beach, a group of native men strode down to meet the newcomers. They were taller and stronger than the North Americans. Their faces were broad and clean-shaven, their eyes slanted. Asian people.
Encased in furs from head to foot and bearing spears, bows and arrows, they aimed the weapons at the visitors, but tentatively. Raising his hands in a open gesture of friendship, James walked directly up to them. ‘Good day,’ he declared. ‘Captain Cook, James Cook, of the navy of King George of England.’ He turned to Discovery’s commander. ‘And this is Charles Clerke, also a captain in King George’s navy.’
Comprehending little of this, the natives nevertheless lowered their weapons. James handed them beads, nails and wads of tobacco, and they grinned as they accepted the gifts. The party took particular note of the natives’ animal-skin quivers, which were beautifully embroidered. Delighted with the wads of tobacco, the natives sniffed them and sighed with delight. ‘Chukchi,’ they said, pointing at themselves. They lived by hunting foxes, they mimed, whose fur they sold to the ‘Ross-see-ya’, they said, pointing westward. ‘That must be where they get their tobacco,’ Clerke surmised. ‘From trading furs with the Russians.’
A big man wearing a wolf-skin cap handed James, then Clerke, a bundle of fox furs. As they accepted them, a native at the rear of the group began to beat on a skin drum. The others immediately put their weapons down and broke into a joyous dance, jigging, whooping and stomping on the sand. Unable to resist, the officers and marines joined in, laughing and shouting.
After allowing a few minutes of this happy fraternisation, James called to his men, ‘We’ll leave now. Return to the boats.’ Reluctantly they obeyed.
The fleeting but hospitable visit to the inlet James named St Lawrence Bay—after its equivalent feature on the eastern coast of America—had revived their spirits. Furthermore, the sky had now cleared to a hard, bright blue, the temperature was above freezing and the wind was from the south. The portents looked promising. Both ships weighed, then set sail on a north-easterly course.
Two days later, on 12 August, with the sky still clear, James and King made their usual midday astronomic observations. Lowering his sextant, James announced to the other officers, ‘Sixty-six degrees and thirty-three minutes North. Gentlemen, we are crossing the Arctic Circle.’
The others broke into applause. And James thought, I have ventured across both the Antarctic and the Arctic Circles in this ship: the only man in all history ever to have done so. How he would regale the Admiralty lords and his family with this achievement!
Their elation was short-lived. Next day the fogs returned, the temperature plummeted and the ships were again buffeted by unfavourable winds. If the Bering Sea had been merely surly, then the Arctic Ocean was openly hostile. The wind chopped the sea into hard, steep swells which pounded the ships. There were cross-currents and fierce tides which forced them to stand well off the northern coast of Alaska and hampered their progress northward. The temperature did not rise above freezing and the fogs were impenetrable. When they did lift they were replaced by driving sleet. The men stumbled about the decks and rigging like clumsy snowmen, their hands numb, their eyebrows iced over, their lips and noses stiff with the cold. Their snot froze in their nostrils, and working the sheets and sails was agonising, as their fingers became bruised and sometimes torn. Their coarse wool waistcoats and twill drawers were no barrier against the bitter winds, and they ceased to feel their feet.
Still the fogs persisted. The ships strove to stay together, Discovery following Resolution and its bobbing fog-buoy as a faithful hound follows its master. Beating drums and ringing bells to keep the ships in touch was one way for the crews to keep warm; blowing the horns was impossible, as the instruments had become clogged with ice.
In mid-August they saw their first ice mountains. Thereafter the sea was littered with them, jagged chunks of ice through which the ships sailed hesitantly, striving to keep their distance, since they were aware that the bulk of these icy islands lay below the level of the sea. As the two ships tacked amongst them, sailing masters Bligh and Edgar ran constantly from one side of their ship to the other, or dashed to the mast platforms, from where they shouted directions down to the helmsmen. Both sloops’ foresails, mainsails and spankers were kept close-reefed to reduce their speed and so minimise the chance of hitting one of the mountains.
The ice might have been menacing, but not everyone on Resolution resented its presence. As the ship moved hesitantly through the field, artist Webber made a perch for himself in the bow and sketched the mountains’ infinitely varied shapes. And once, when a boat was launched in order to collect some ice chunks for fresh water, Webber went along and drew the two vessels as they were hove to and surrounded by the craggy white bergs. Proudly showing James a drawing he had made, Webber said, ‘There is a beauty in this ocean, Captain. A terrible beauty, and one largely without colour, but beauty nonetheless.’ His face was blue and pinched by the cold but his eyes shone.
The statement irritated James. Disregarding the drawing, he said, ‘I don’t share your enthusiasm, Webber. When I look at the ice, all I see is an impediment to the North-east Passage. And a damnably cold one at that.’
‘But I am seeing the ice mountains through an artist’s eyes, Captain.’ There was disappointment rather than reproach in his tone.
‘And I am seeing them through a navigator’s. Draw the ice mountains by all means, but don’t expect me to find them beautiful.’ He was growing heartedly sick of the ice.
There was another noise that gave notice of the ice’s proximity: the bellowing of the sea elephants that made it their home. Through the fog, the huge creatures’ trumpeting at their rivals carried to the sloops, a noise as repulsive as the creatures themselves. But the roaring was also a useful signal, cautioning the helmsmen that the ice was close. Whenever they heard the roaring of the sea elephants, Bligh and Edgar ordered the ships to bear away.
Towards the end of August the clerk reported to James that the supplies of salt beef and pork were running low. For once James was not overly concerned at this news. He gave an order for the remaining salt meat supplies to be rationed, since he knew that there was now an alternative source of meat. Surgeon Law had reported that some of the men were showing symptoms of scurvy, bleeding gums in particular. Fresh meat, with its anti-scorbutic properties, would help ward off the scourge, as James had proved on his second voyage.
He ordered the sloops hove to and issued instructions to a party led by Ewin. The boats were launched and rowed across to an ice shelf where a dozen huge sea elephants lay slumped and grunting. From a short distance away the men shot nine of the creatures with their muskets. After the rest had dragged themselves away, bellowing with fury, Ewin and the others decapitated and eviscerated the dead ones with axes and hooks. The carcasses were ferried back to the ships and hauled aboard. Some were more than nine feet long and over half a ton in weight. They were butchered on deck and the chunks of blubber sent below to the galley. Cook Morris was instructed to boil, then slice and fry the meat for serving to the crew the next day.
At midday James’s servant brought him a portion of the fried sea elephant. Swimming in fat, it covered most of the large plate. Dining alone, he placed a napkin around his neck then began to cut the meat with his knife. It made no impact. He tried again, but the knife still would not penetrate. He fetched his sharpest dagger from his cabin, and after several attempts managed to hack off some chunks of meat. He placed one in his mouth and began to chew. It had a distinctive taste. Very oily, and not the tenderest meat he’d ever eaten, but palatable nonetheless. He kept chewing, swallowed, then hacked off another chunk and put it in his mouth. ‘Marine beef’ was a name this fare could be given, he decided. And there was sufficient quantity of it aboard to last them through to the North-east Passage and out the other end.
‘Sir?’ It was Ewin, who had been shown to the mess door by
the sentry.
James looked up from his meal. ‘What is it?’
The bosun shuffled nervously. ‘It’s the able seamen, sir.’
‘What about them?’
‘They refuse to eat the sea elephant, sir.’
‘What?’
‘They won’t eat it, Captain. The cook told me they cursed him after he served it up. Their descriptions of the meat were colourful, sir, Morris reported.’ Ewin tried not to smile. ‘A Clydesdale’s baked arse would be tenderer, one said. A badger boiled in castor oil would taste better, was another opinion. So they took the meat up and chucked it overboard.’
James leapt to his feet. ‘Good God, what a waste!’
Ewin shrugged. ‘Mebbe, sir, but they were stubborn. They won’t have a bar of the sea elephant.’
‘What are they eating instead?’
‘Since you’ve rationed the salt beef and pork, sir, they’re just having the ship’s biscuit. And nothin’ else.’
James went immediately to the crewmen’s mess. Even before he got there he smelled a stench. Not just the lower deck’s usual sweat-farts-onions-sauerkraut-and-pipe-smoke smell, but something additional and different, a pong that permeated the mess like the stink from a Stepney sewer.
A dozen crewmen sat at the tables, nibbling their biscuits. James stood in the door of the mess, glaring at them. When they saw who it was they stared down at their square wooden plates, avoiding his eyes. The commander rarely visited this part of the ship.
James stepped forward. ‘Is it true,’ he demanded, ‘that you have rejected the sea-elephant meat?’
Still looking down, they muttered, ‘Aye, Captain.’
‘And is it also true that you threw good meat overboard?’
There was a long, sullen silence, broken eventually by a voice from the end of one of the mess tables. ‘It were not good meat, sir.’ The rejoinder came from able seaman Mathew Dailey, who had a nose like a spigot.
James scowled. ‘Not good meat, Dailey? Not good meat? It is fresh and healthful. I ate it, and you will eat it!’
Irishman James Dermot raised his hand. His face was dimpled with smallpox scars. ‘Beggin’ yer pardon, sir, but some of us don’t have the teeth for it.’ He bared his toothless gums. ‘We canna chew the stuff, sir.’
‘And the stink, Captain.’ This judgment came from Jan de Beecker, who hailed from Bremen. ‘The elephant meat is stinking, sir, like a rotten hedgepig.’ There were mutterings of agreement around the tables.
James’s gaze swept the cabin. He was tempted to order the lot of them lashed, ungrateful swine that they were. Wasting food was a flogging offence, the more so since their supplies were low.
Hands behind his back, shaking with rage, he announced through gritted teeth: ‘Since you refuse to eat perfectly good fresh meat, you will continue to make do with ship’s biscuit, along with the sauerkraut and malt to keep the scurvy at bay.’ His glare intensified. ‘And any man who does not follow these orders will be given three dozen lashes.’
He turned and left the mess, as angry as he had ever been on any voyage. Let them eat biscuits. Weevils and all.
Twenty-seven
17 AUGUST 1778
Dearest Elizabeth,
We are now in the Arctic Sea. Fog and sleet are our constant companions and we make only slow progress north. We have forgotten what it is like to be warm. Over our meals in the officers’ mess we reminisce about English summers and how our loved ones will be relishing the warmth and greenness of that season. But we sail on, optimistic that somewhere to the north lies a passage through to the Atlantic.
I continue to be afflicted by gut pains and constipation. My old hand scar is also aggravated by the cold, in spite of the glove I now wear on it day and night. These hardships I can just cope with. What affects me much more is my failure to sleep. This insomnia is combined with the strangest impression: that somehow in these past weeks I have become two men. Particularly when I am lying abed, it is as if I am another person watching myself, and that self is demented. If this sounds absurd to you, when I see those words on the page it seems so to me as well. Nevertheless the hallucination is a vivid, recurring phenomenon.
Lying awake in my berth, I watch my deranged self moving about the ship. My observing self is not deranged, so is able to observe the other fellow in a totally unemotional manner. The apparition James Cook which I observe is usually out of control, fuming, violent and unfit for command. He is a monster. I wonder: could the hideous hallucination be caused by the laudanum the surgeon prescribes for me?
Meanwhile, my real self is constantly short-tempered. Whereas before I was able to bear an even strain (except when confronted with the direst of circumstances), my real self now cannot abide slackness or incompetence of any kind. The errors and indiscretions of others of the ship’s company, or even the mildest of misjudgments on their part, cause a loss of equilibrium in me. I then become like a ship in a storm with a loose rudder.
Try as I might, I cannot overcome this loss of self-restraint. And unless I get proper sleep, I fear that the condition will worsen. The laudanum provides only temporary relief, followed by the nightmares, then by a craving for a further dose of the remedy. Thus, awake or sleeping, I am never at peace.
A certain cure for this condition would be the discovery of the North-east Passage. If this occurs my melancholia will dissolve like dew under spring sunshine and my spectral self will be banished forever. I live in hope.
Yesterday our astronomic observations revealed that our position was 70° 33' North. Almost as far as I voyaged south in the Antarctic five years ago. (Was it five years ago, or four? Time has become vague and my memory is sometimes as foggy as the air that surrounds us. Doubtless another consequence of my chronic sleeplessness.)
Yesterday through a lifting mist we sighted a landform that I named Icy Cape. It is a promontory as bleak, snow-covered and windswept as any I saw in the Antarctic.
‘Captain!’
There was a loud knock on the cabin door. James blotted and closed Elizabeth’s journal. ‘Come.’
Gore’s face appeared. Agitated, he caught his breath, then managed to speak. ‘Captain, there is a sight you must see.’
It was one o’clock in the afternoon. The news had spread quickly through the ship and the entire company—crew, midshipmen and officers—had gathered along the rails or climbed the rigging.
James and Gore joined the other officers on the quarterdeck. All stared towards the north.
‘We first observed the light about an hour ago,’ said Gore.
‘It’s the reflection of the sun on the ice,’ James said quietly. ‘It’s known as “the blink”. It has been observed in the North Atlantic too. Near Greenland.’
His scope trained on the horizon, Gore said, ‘The ice sheet itself appeared about two hours ago.’
The tone of his voice betrayed his disappointment. A heavy silence descended on the quarterdeck. All realised what the spectacle that lay before them meant. The ice sheet extended from one side of the horizon to the other, radiating a blindingly luminous light. Above the ice shelf, visible through the mist, was a range of snow-covered mountains as wide as the ice itself.
‘Hold your course,’ James called to the helmsmen. ‘We’ll go in as close as we can.’ He turned to ensure that Discovery was still shadowing them. She was.
By 2.30 pm both ships were tacking in tandem, close to the leading edge of the ice sheet. The wind was only a zephyr and the leadsman measured the depth at just 22 fathoms. Half a league from the edge of the sheet, both ships were brought to. All aboard stared, speechless, at the ice sheet’s immensity. About 12 feet high, its edge was as solid and impenetrable as a castle wall. Deep within it, the surface whiteness gave way to a molten blue, and beyond the glassy wall the white mountains had a ghostly aspect. The entire mass glowed, as if heated by an interior fire.
The spectacle was at once hypnotic and shattering. Hypnotic because of the ice’s immensity and radiant whitenes
s, shattering because they realised the implications of its appearance. There could be no way through.
King had been taking observations from the main masthead platform. He climbed down, then announced to James, ‘Latitude seventy degrees, forty-four minutes North, sir.’
James just nodded. Not quite as far in its equivalence as he had reached on his Antarctic voyage, but still further north than anyone had been before. But this was of little consolation. There could be no way through to the North Atlantic from here at this time. Summer was drawing to a close; from now on the ice field would move in only one direction: south. And southward-moving pack ice would make any further northward probes impossible. At least for this year.
For the umpteenth time, James cursed the weeks they had wasted in the Friendly Isles, the Sandwich Isles, Nootka Sound, and the sound they had diverted to at Gore’s urging. Those diversions had added up to months, time that might have made all the difference. Even four weeks ago the ice sheet would not have extended this far south and so might have offered further access to the north. They were now paying the penalty for their repeated delays.
A melancholy silence had befallen the ship. Even the dimmest of the crew could see that there could be no further progress. To be caught within the ice would mean no escape. Death from cold, starvation and sea elephant would follow. Some of the crew turned and looked up towards the quarterdeck where James stood by the rail, his expression grave. All were wondering, What now?
Bligh approached him. ‘Shall we continue westward, sir?’
‘Are you suggesting we have a choice in the matter, Bligh?’
‘No, sir.’ The young man coloured his commander’s scornful tone.
James looked over towards the other ship. ‘Signal Discovery. Let Clerke and Burney know that we need to talk.’
With the ships tacking cautiously westward, about a league from the edge of the ice sheet, the officers met in the Great Cabin. Clerke reported that Discovery’s supplies were low and that some men were suffering from scurvy. Fresh food would soon be desperately needed. Resolution’s carpenters had reported to James that the ship had developed another leak. Her sails were also in poor condition due to broken bolt-ropes and worn cordage. An entire suit of her sails had been lost when the bolt-ropes gave way in a squall.
